What: "Eradicating jargon takes vigilance and skill. It takes vigilance because jargon is like mold: it creeps up on you on unaware. It takes skill because often times, you're battling powers greater than yourself (i.e. management who thinks talking in this stiff, stilted way helps attract customers.)"

What: "Corporate jargon is like insect infestation. It gets into everything. Suddenly your verbs are being made into nouns, your nouns into verbs, words are mashed together and then clipped before the suffix, new words are created from old ones, half-metaphores are mating with other half-metaphores, and the net net is EMPLOYEES DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK EXECUTIVES ARE SAYING. But we're supposed to, and that's the frustrating thing."

What: "Today, people cloistered in niches are at a great disadvantage. The winners will master one or both of the two world languages in the global economy, English and math. Both of them cross borders and bridge disciplines. Jargon is like proprietary software in a world moving toward open-source."

What: "To me, the use of jargon is like the bell at the start of a round of boxing. Prepare for some fancy footwork. In advertising copy, it appears as the seven highly over-exposed habitual cliches of the hack writer."

What: "Jargon is like the anti-English these days. As the world converges on one language we diverge with our little jargon village dialects. Military, engineering, legal, medical, computing, does it end?"

METAMIA is a free database of analogy
and metaphor. Anyone can contribute or search.
The subject matter can be anything.
Science is popular, but poetry is encouraged.
The goal is to integrate our fluid muses with
the stark literalism of a relational database.
Metamia is like a girdle for your muses,
a cognitive girdle.